As she opened the house door, Sir Ronald came out of the drawing-room, not looking too well pleased at having been deserted all the afternoon.
"Are you going out?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Up the village."
"Always up the village!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "and always alone.
May I not go with you? It is growing, late."
"There is no occasion," she replied, looking at him proudly. "I need no protector in St. Croix."
She opened the door and went out, and walked rapidly down the bleak avenue to the gates. The authoritative tone of the baronet stung her proud spirit to the quick.
"What right has he to talk to me like that?" she thought, angrily. "If I loved him, I would not endure it; I don"t love him, and I won"t endure it."
Her eyes flashed as she walked along, lightly and rapidly, holding her haughty head very erect. Greetings met her on every hand as she pa.s.sed through the village. She never paused until she reached the church, and stood by the entrance gate of the little garden in front of the Cure"s house. There she paused irresolute. How peaceful it was--what a holy hush seemed to linger round the place! All her courage left her, and she stood as timid and fluttering as any school-girl. While she hesitated, the door opened, and Father Francis stood looking at her.
"Come in, Miss Danton," he said. "You look as if you were almost afraid."
She opened the little gate and went up the path, looking strangely downcast and troubled. Father Francis held out his hand with a smile.
"I thought you would come to see me before you left Canada," he said, "although you seem to have rather forgotten your old friends of late.
Come in."
"Are you alone?" Kate asked, following him into the little parlour.
"Quite alone. The Cure has gone two miles off on a sick call. And how are the good people of Danton Hall?"
"Very well," Kate answered, taking a seat by the window and looking out at the pale, yellow sunset.
"That is, except yourself, Miss Danton. You have grown thin within the last fortnight. What is the matter?"
"I am not very happy," she said, with a little tremor of the voice; "perhaps that is it."
"Not happy?" repeated Father Francis, with a short, peculiar laugh. "I thought when young ladies married baronets, the height of earthly felicity was attained. It seems rather sordid, this marrying for wealth and t.i.tle. I hardly thought Kate Danton would do it; but it appears I have made a foolish mistake."
"Thank you," Kate said, very slowly. "I came here to ask you to be cruel to me--to tell me hard truths. You know how to be cruel very well, Father Francis."
"Why do you come to me for hard truths?" said the priest, rather coldly.
"You have been deluding yourself all along; why don"t you go on? What is the use of telling you the truth? You will do as you like in the end."
"Perhaps not. I have not fallen quite so low as you think. I dare say you despise me, but you can hardly despise me more than I despise myself."
"Then why walk on in the path that leads you downward? Why not stop before it is too late?"
"It is too late now!"
"Stuff and nonsense! That is more of your self-delusion. You, or rather that pride of yours, which has been the great stumbling-block of your life, leads you on in that self-delusion. Too late! It would not be too late if you were before the altar! Better stop now and endure the humiliation than render your own and this man"s future life miserable.
You will never be happy as Sir Ronald Keith"s wife; he will never be happy as your husband. I know how you are trying to delude yourself; I know you are trying to believe you will love him and be happy by-and-by.
Don"t indulge such sophistry any longer; don"t be led away by your own pride and folly."
"Pride and folly!" she echoed indignantly.
"Yes, I repeat it. Your heart, your conscience, must own the truth of what I say, if your lips will not. Would you ever have accepted Sir Ronald Keith if your father had not been about to marry Grace Danton?"
The sudden flush that overspread her face answered for her, though she did not speak. She sat looking straight before her into vacancy, with a hard, despairing look in her dark, deep eyes.
"You know you would not. But your father is going to marry a most excellent and most estimable woman; his affection is not wholly his daughter"s any longer; she must stand a little in the shade, and see another reign where she used to be queen. She cannot hold the first place in her father"s heart and home; so she is ready to leave that home with the first man who asks her. She does not love him; there is no sympathy or feeling in common between them; they are not even of the same religion; she knows that she will be wretched, and that she will make him wretched too. But what does it all matter? Her pride is to be wounded, her self-love humiliated, and every other consideration must yield to that. She is ready to commit perjury, to swear to love and honour a man who is no more to her than that peasant walking along the road. She is ready to degrade herself and risk her soul by a mercenary marriage sooner than bear that wound to pride!"
"Go on!" Kate said, bitterly; "it is well to have one"s heart lacerated sometimes, I suppose. Pray go on."
"I intend to go on. You have been used to queening it all your life--to being flattered, and indulged, and pampered to the top of your bent, and it will do you good. When you are this man"s miserable wife, you shall never say Father Francis might have warned me--Father Francis might have saved me. You have ruled here with a ring and a clatter; you have been pleased to dazzle and bewilder the simple people of St. Croix, to see yourself looked up to as a sort of G.o.ddess. Your rank, and accomplishments, and beauty--we are talking plain truth now, Miss Danton--all these gifts that G.o.d has bestowed upon you so bountifully, you have misused. It doesn"t seem so to you, does it? You think you have been very good, very charitable, very condescending. I don"t deny that you have done good, that you have been a sort of guardian angel to the poor and the sick; but what was your motive? Was it that which makes thousands of girls, as young, and rich, and handsome as yourself, resign everything for the humble garb and lowly duties of a Sister of Charity?
Oh, no! You liked to be idolized, to be venerated, and looked up to as an angel upon earth. That pride of yours which induces you to sell yourself for so many thousand pounds per annum was at the bottom of it all. You want to hold a foremost place in the great battle of life--you want all obstacles to give way before you. It can"t be; and your whole life is a failure."
"Go on," Kate reiterated, never stirring, never looking at him, and white as death.
"You have fancied yourself very good, very immaculate, and thanked Heaven in an uplifted sort of way that you were not as other women, false, and mean, and sordid. You wanted to walk through life in a pathway of roses without thorns, to a placid death, and a heritage of glory in Heaven. The trials of common people were not for you; sorrow, and disappointment, and suffering were to pa.s.s Miss Danton by. You were so good, and so far up in the clouds, nothing low or base could reach you. Well, it was not to be. You were only clay, after all--the porcelain of human clay, perhaps, but very brittle stuff withal. Trouble did come; the man you had made a sort of idol of, to whom you had given your whole heart, with a love so intense as to be sinful--this man abandons you. The sister you have trusted and been fond of, deceives you, and you find that trouble is something more than a word of two syllables. You have been very great, and n.o.ble, and heroic all your life, in theory--how do we find you in practice? Why, drooping like any other lovelorn damsel, pining away without one effort at that greatness and heroism you thought so much of; without one purpose to conquer yourself, without one effort to be resigned to the will of Heaven. You rebel against your father"s marriage; everybody else ought to be lonely and unhappy because you are; the world ought to wear c.r.a.pe, and the light of the sun be darkened. But the world laughs and sings much as usual, the sun shines as joyously. Your father"s marriage will be an accomplished fact, and our modern heroine says "yes" to the first man who asks her to marry him in a fit of spleen, because she will be Grace Danton"s step-daughter, and must retire a little into the background, and look forward to the common humdrum life ordinary mortals lead. She doesn"t ask help where help alone is to be found; so in the hour of her trial there is no light for her in earth or Heaven. Oh, my child! stop and think what you are going to do before it is too late."
"I can"t think," she said, in a hollow voice. "I only know I am a miserable, sinful, fallen creature. Help me, Father Francis; tell me what I am to do."
"Do not ask help from me," the young priest said, gravely; "ask it of that compa.s.sionate Father who is in Heaven. Oh! my child, the way to that land of peace and rest is the way of the Cross--the only way. There are more thorns than roses under our feet, but we must go on like steadfast soldiers to the end, bearing our cross, and keeping the battle-cry of the brave old Crusaders in our hearts, "G.o.d wills it."
Your trouble has been heavy, my poor child, I don"t doubt, but you cannot be exempt from the common lot. I am sorry for you, Heaven knows, and I would make your life a happy one if I could, in spite of all the harsh things I may say. It is because I would not have your whole life miserable that I talk to you like this. Your heart acknowledges the truth of every word I have said; and remember there is but one recipe for real happiness--goodness. Be good and you will be happy. It is a hackneyed precept out of a copy-book," Father Francis said, with a slight smile; "but believe me, it is the only infallible rule. Rouse yourself to a better life, my dear Kate; begin a new and more perfect life, and G.o.d will help you. Remember, dear child, "There is a love that never fails when earthly loves decay.""
She did not speak. She rose up, cold, and white, and rigid. The priest arose too.
"Are you going?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You are not offended with me for all this plain talk? I like you so much, you know, that I want to see you happy."
"Offended?" she answered, "oh, no! Some day I will thank you; I cannot now."
She opened the door and was gone, flitting along, a lonely figure in the bleak winter twilight. She never paused in her rapid walk until she reached Danton Hall; and then, pale and absorbed, she ran rapidly upstairs, and shut herself into her room. Throwing off her bonnet and mantle, she sat down to her writing-desk at once, and without waiting to think, took up a pen and dashed off a rapid note:
"Sir Ronald:--I have deceived you. I have done very wrong.
I don"t love you--I never can; and I cannot be your wife. I am very sorry; I ask you to forgive me--to be generous, and release me from my promise. I should be miserable as your wife, and I would make you miserable too. Oh! pray forgive me, and release me, for indeed I cannot marry you.
"Kate Danton."
She folded the note rapidly, placed it in an envelope, wrote the address, "Sir Ronald Keith," and sealed it. Still in the same rapid way, as if she were afraid to pause, afraid to trust herself, she arose and rang the bell. Eunice answered the summons, and stared aghast at her mistress" face.
"Do you know if Sir Ronald is in the house?" Miss Danton asked.
"Yes, Miss; he"s sitting in the library, reading a paper."